mostly just walking

[solarbird]

Deeply lame today. Looking at insurance papers, trying to figure out how much this whole accident/hospital adventure (nobody should have to pay for a vacation that crappy, and yet) is going to cost us. Short answer: we dunno yet, probably five digits. Should be low fives, unless the insurance company decides to screw with us. Also read a bit and was good about doing all my physical therapy, but I'm generally good about stuff like that, so, well, there it is.

Tomorrow I should do some gardening. The weather's good for it, which is nice; there're a lot of blackberries and ivy to hack back. Someday when we have money again (funny how I keep having to say that again every time we start to get properly ahead, it's frankly kinda depressing) I look forward to doing something about the steep-hill back yard. That will help a whole lot, because that's where most of it comes from.

Classes start on Thursday. Hopefully I can go off the meds on time.

Today's (Saturday's) Miles: 2.8 less tired than after the 2.5 to the poll for voting; hey, it's a step
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1331.8
Miles out of Rivendell: 866.8
Miles out of Lothlórien: 411.8
Miles past Rauros Falls: 3.0
Miles to Isengard: 467.0

And a proper flower picture. Tomorrow I need to process more, I'm out of web-sized pictures again already!


Teacup Rose

Comments

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Thank god for insurance... hospital bills seem totally surreal.

That rose looks remarkably like a hibiscus - or maybe I'm dreaming?

[solarbird]

I can kinda see that, yeah. Teacup roses don't look like the generalised icon of "rose." But you'll note from the leaves below it (which are attached) - those are clearly rose leaves. This one's behind the house in the little raised bed between the gravel path and the retaining wall. (And behind the retaining wall there is only madness blackberry, horsetail, and ivy. Well, okay, and a bunch of birch trees growing in on one side. But you get the idea.

[wandering--soul.livejournal.com]

gardening is good for the soul i hear. or at least so my grandmother tells me. of course she had 5 separate themed gardens on her property so heaven only knows how she keeps up with it all.

on a side note. i feel dumb for asking this but what kind of accident were you in?

[solarbird]

I don't know the details as there weren't witnesses and I don't remember; I was found about half an hour later on the side of the road with my bicycle mangled, a skull fracture, and bleeding from the head. So some kind of accident with my bike. Because I'd been going uphill (and, accordingly, going slowly), the bike people I've talked to about this think I was hit - otherwise there just wouldn't have been enough energy in the movement to bend the frame. The best alternative theory is spontaneous catastrophic bike failure. Anyway, in the ambulance they ran into some of my rather atypical psyiology when trying to put an oxygen tube down my throat and I aspirated.

I was unconscious for nine days on oxygen; there was actually more concern over the lung damage than the brain trauma, I'm told. The first two days conscious again in the ICU, I was convinced I was in Mexico, which is funny now. They were talking about four weeks to a month of inpatient physical therapy after the hospital once I got out. If they'd been right, I'd have been getting out of that probably sometime this week, but I'm me, so I got to go home on day 16 (prompting the gosh-I'm-proud-of this doctor line, "What are you? ... That's four weeks recovery in three and a half days!"). I'm now doing outpatient therapy for upper body work mostly at this point. I was doing walking and balance work at first; they couldn't work on my upper body due to muscle injury in my right shoulder, but they can work on that now and are. My left ear is damaged and may and may not recover; I don't hear properly with it and there's a whine that comes and goes and changes pitch. I really, really, really don't want tinnitis. And I'm still weak (compared to before - I lost 11lbs, most of which was muscle mass, while under) and don't have the stamina I had.

Anyway, that's the short form. My left ear is the thing I'm worried about in the long term. I'm running only at about 75% of CPU, which bothers me no end, but I know that's the anti-seizure meds they still have me on. I'm hoping I can go off those on the 28th, because if I can't, I don't know how I'm going to manage fall quarter classes, which I'm kind of worried about anyway.

[wandering--soul.livejournal.com]

0.o wow. i'm glad your doing a bit better though. well if anything happens to you in japan at least i can say your medical bills wont be as bad. i hope your ear gets better. i have partial hearing loss in my left ear too so i know how you feel sort of.